Children with autism spectrum disorder often have either an exaggerated or a numbed response to sight, sound and touch. This behavior is so common that it’s one of the diagnostic criteria for the disorder. Now, a new study suggests that children with autism might also experience smells differently from children who have typical development.

Imagine the way you might smell a rose. You'd take a nice big sniff to breathe in the sweet but subtle floral scent. Upon walking into a public restroom, you'd likely do just the opposite -- abruptly limiting the flow of air through your nose. Now, researchers have found that people with autism spectrum disorder don't make this natural adjustment like other people do.

When my husband and I set out to find a nursery school for our daughter, Faith, nearly ten years ago we took the decision seriously. I looked at large parent-run cooperatives and visited small home-based operations. Jeff studied the pink towers and chiming bells at the Montessori school on the hill... By Sandra Steingraber. (2011)

Recent public discussions suggest that there is much disagreement about the way autism is and should be described. This study sought to elicit the views and preferences of UK autism community members – autistic people, parents and their broader support network – about the terms they use to describe autism.

Wizard Mode is the story of Robert Gagno as he rises up the ranks of the international pinball circuit while striving to gain his independence and transcend the label of autism. This is a short film version of our debut feature length documentary of the same name coming out in September.

The history of science is studded with stories of simultaneous discovery, in which two imaginative souls (or more!) turn out to have been digging tunnels to the same unspoiled destination. The most fabled example is calculus, developed independently in two different countries by Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.

LARPing, or live-action roleplaying, is a game in which people create characters and act out storylines within fictional worlds, in real time, in costume. We go LARPing and meet Jon Gallagher, a LARPer with Asperger's syndrome, and see how LARPing helps him make friends, learn social skills, get a job, and in many ways, saves his life.

It’s also worth remembering that education is kind of economically weird. It’s not just another thing you buy. Education isn’t only about individual gain. There’s a social aspect as well. We want everyone to have access to quality education because having an educated populace benefits all of us. We’re not there yet. (throw to inequality?)

MIT and Harvard University neuroscientists have found a link between a behavioral symptom of autism and reduced activity of a neurotransmitter whose job is to dampen neuron excitation. The findings suggest that drugs that boost the action of this neurotransmitter, known as GABA, may improve some of the symptoms of autism, the researchers say.

The fulfilling life of Donald Grey Triplett offers an important lesson for today. Donald Grey Triplett was the first person to be diagnosed with autism. The fulfilling life he has led offers an important lesson for today, John Donvan and Caren Zucker write. After Rain Man, and The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time, the next great autism portrayal the stage or screen might want to consider taking on is the life of one Donald Grey Triplett...

Scientists in China say they used genetic engineering to create monkeys with a version of autism, an achievement that could make it easier to test treatments but that raises thorny practical and ethical questions over how useful such animal models will be. Neuroscientist Zilong Qiu of the Shanghai Institutes for Biological Sciences says his team has generated more than a dozen monkeys with a genetic error that in human children causes a rare syndrome whose symptoms...

Two separate groups of researchers have uncovered similar techniques for figuring out whether children have autism that's quick, cheap, easy, and highly accurate: tracking the way their eyes move using a webcam and software. The new procedures...

Two separate groups of researchers have uncovered similar techniques for figuring out whether children have autism that's quick, cheap, easy, and highly accurate: tracking the way their eyes move using a webcam and software. The new procedures could ultimately lead to an earlier and more accurate diagnosis for affected patients. Until now, children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have been identified using parental reports, clinical observations and interviews with the children themselves.

For a long time, it was thought that people with autism spectrum disorder lacked emotion, that even the higher-functioning among them navigated the world like logical robots oblivious to “real” feelings. More recently, research has shown their social issues are more likely to stem from difficulty expressing emotion or reading the emotions of others. Though he wasn’t diagnosed with autism until he was 40, John Elder Robison felt isolated and disconnected throughout his entire...